


Fallen Leaves

by TheMissingMask



Series: Driving Drabbles [8]
Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dirk Gently Needs a Hug, Drabble, Drug Addiction, Drug Withdrawal, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Project Blackwing (Dirk Gently), Todd Brotzman is a Good Boyfriend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-04 06:25:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15835611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMissingMask/pseuds/TheMissingMask
Summary: "Thinking back, Todd realises it must have begun immediately following the Wendimoor debacle."Dirk has a problem.





	Fallen Leaves

**Author's Note:**

> This is the combined product of Fallen Leaves (Billy Talent), Friend, Please (Twenty One Pilots), and watching the final season of Penny Dreadful while listening to Gothic literature audio books (there is a fair amount of opiate usage in both...).
> 
> I apologise for this. Also, more seriously, a warning for referenced drug usage/withdrawal thereof.

Thinking back, Todd realises it must have begun immediately following the Wendimoor debacle. Not that knowing its origin at this point is much help to anyone. It’s certainly no help to Dirk, wrapped up in a woollen blanket as he sits on their bed shivering.

“Please.” He begs, and Todd has to turn away or he knows he’ll give in.

When Todd had eventually found out, and he can’t understand now how it took so long, Dirk had tried to explain himself in a torrent of incoherent words as Todd had held his slender arm outstretched, glaring at the track marks on the inside of his elbow. The universe was too much. It was unbearable. Hunch after hunch after hunch. A constant pull in his mind. Go this way, no, go that way. Take that object, talk to that person, stop, start, keep going. A constant stream of messages, none making sense, impossible to tell within all the feelings and thoughts and hunches what, if any, of it belonged to him.

He had to shut it up. He needed just a moment of silence. Some modicum of peace. Like he had experienced in the hospital just after they removed the bullet from his leg. A bliss granted by the morphine dripping into his veins through the IV.

Todd doesn’t know, doesn’t _want_ to know, how Dirk managed to get the morphine. Or the heroine he had progressed to. What he wants to know is why Dirk didn’t talk to him. Why he felt the need to hide this.

For that, Dirk could give no answer.

“Please Todd. Just once more. I promise. The last time.”

Todd closes his eyes and tries to block out Dirk’s desperate, pleading voice.

It helped him forget about Blackwing too, Dirk had tried to justify further, or at least not feel the pain of the memories it had left for him. He had tried to reason that he had it under control.

Todd didn’t believe him, but he had wanted to. So he had made Dirk promise to let Todd help him recover. He had made the promise in the most earnest resolution, but was gone by the time Todd woke the next morning.

Farah has been the one to find him in the end, curled in on himself against a tree in the park, surrounded by fallen leaves and discarded needles. His hands had been shaking so badly from the cold that he couldn’t get the needle into a vein at first. Then he’d used just a bit too much. Enough to stop him from making it back to the apartment, but not enough to kill.

“I’m sorry, Todd. Please don’t...please don’t be mad at me.”

At this, Todd has to turn back. Dirk is thin, pale, and trembling. His skin is clammy with cold sweat and his eyes deepened by dark shadows. Tear tracks find their way down his face.

Todd wants to reassure him.  Wants to say that he’s not mad.  But that would be a lie, and he’s done lying.  He’s angry. Furious, in fact.  At Dirk.  At himself.  At Blackwing.  At the goddamn universe.  He knows that if he dares open his mouth, that rage will come out and Dirk, whose barely hanging on as it is, will break.  He can’t speak.  He can’t do anything to make this right.  

Todd turns to walk out because he can’t be here anymore.  He can’t do this.

“Please don’t leave me.” Dirk whispers, reaching out to catch Todd’s wrist. His hand is cold.  It doesn’t feel like it belongs to Dirk.

Todd has to steel himself. He closes his eyes and forces down the duelling urges to run and yell, because that’s what his instincts scream at him to do.  Just leave because it’s not your problem.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Is what he sodtly says after a long, pained silence.  He sits beside Dirk on the bed and pulls him into his arms.

“I’m sorry.” Dirk buries his head against Todd’s neck, “I just wanted it all to stop. Just for a little while.”

Todd strokes his sweat-damp hair and presses a kiss to his temple.

He knows. He can’t possibly understand, not fully, but he knows a little of what Dirk means.  He gets the need to run away, to look desperately for a way to fix something that just can’t be fixed. He understands the irrationality of the unrelenting need.  He recognises the belief that just doing this one thing will make everything ok.

But he also knows the impossibility. That giving in will only makes things worse.  He wants Dirk to know this too, and to realise that he’s not alone.  He doesn’t have to deal with this, any of it, alone.  There’s nothing to be said and, really, nothing that can be said.  But, holding Dirk through the agonising days that are inevitable to follow, Todd silently vows to do everything he can to show the other man that he will be there with him through it, and still be there when it’s over.


End file.
